Not Like This
by Destined Darkness
Summary: AU One Shot: Thorin and his nephews don't die in the Battle of Five Armies, someone else dies in their place, and Thorin didn't ask for this, yet it happened anyway. Major character death. I am so sorry.


_*crying* What have I done? What have I done?! Major Character Death. _

_Have some tissues! *throws boxes of Kleenex at readers* Just take them!_

_Rant you may ignore: Why in the hell is Thorin not part of the LotR characters list? I am not posting this under the Hobbit because then I have to deal with Legolas being called 'Legolas G' and I am not having that. Grr._

* * *

_Not like this. Not like this._

The smell of burning bodies, burning hair, burning earth; the smell of blood and death.

_Not like this. By Mahal, not like this. _

The strands of golden hair that splay out on the dirt ground, once they glowed with the light of the sun, now dulled and dirty and-

_Not like this. Not like this. I didn't want this. _

The crown of berries and leaves trampled into the ground, once a work of beauty forged by nature itself, now blood splattered and broken and-

_Not like this. Never like this._

The sea blue eyes closed to the world, unnatural, imperfect, so wrong. Elves don't sleep with their eyes closed, had they been open it would have been easy to believe he was but sleeping. Elves don't sleep with their eyes closed.

_Please. _

"I didn't want this, I didn't ask for this. Not like this. Not like this." His legs buckle and he collapses to his knees, tears clouding his vision as he punches the earth. "_Not like this!_"

"Y-you will w-wake the d-dead with that n-noise." A slur of words, noises distorted by blood flooding airways and a body all torn up inside.

"You're alive." Thorin's hands shake as he slides himself over to the broken being lying on the ground. There's so many wounds, too many, all of them fatal and all of them still bleeding, Thorin doesn't know where to start, doesn't know how. But he presses down on the gaping wound in the elf's gut, and feels sick when he realizes the things giving way under his fingers are its internal organs and that his hands are the only things keeping them in place right now. "There's so much blood." Thorin's seen battles, led them, he shouldn't feel this empty, this scared, this bereft of any hope, and he shouldn't feel this helpless, but he does, because he's seen battles, he's led them, and he knows when someone is beyond help.

"This I know. Ma-Ma-Mandos calls me e-even now, and I w-w-will go." Shuddering gasps of air around blood and wheezing of breath over words, they both know it will be over in a few moments. "Fare-well, Th-Thorin, King Un-Under the Mo-Moun-Mountain, elf-friend." And then he's gone, his body going limp and his face evening out, the tension seeming to vanish.

Thorin chokes on a sob and closes his eyes, feeling a hole start to form in his chest where his heart had once been. He lets his hands fall away from the elf's body and he doesn't acknowledge the way they're completely coated in the elf's silver-red blood.

_Not like this. _

He's assaulted by the smell of burning bodies, burning hair, burning earth; the smell of blood and death, and he can't stay here anymore. Thorin fights against the urge to throw up as he pushes himself up off the ground, he stumbles away from the body but collapses only a few short feet from it as he doubles over and is violently ill.

"_Adar!" _Only once, only once in his lifetime has he heard a sound as terrible as that, only once, and once had been enough, sitting with his father hearing the accounts of how his grandfather had died. Once had been enough, watching his father tear at his beard and scream and cry and grieve, it had been enough. It had been enough.

_Not like this. Not like this. Not again. Not like this. _

"_Adar! Adar! _No, please._ Adar! _Adar,_ wake up. _Adar, you can't do this_. _Please. Please_. Valar, please." _The hole in Thorin's chest starts to grow, and he feels like he is being sucked into it, can't get away from it, it won't go away. _"Adar." _There is sobbing now, sobbing and whispering and no screaming, sobbing and whispering and pleads with no sound, but no screaming.

There's the smell of burning bodies, burning hair, burning earth; the smell of blood and death, and he can't stay here anymore. There's silver-red blood on his hands and it shines in the dying light and he can't do this, he can't do this. The world seems to close in on him as he stares at the blood on his hands, and he can't breathe, he can't think, he can't do this, he can't do this. He didn't want this.

_Please, not like this._

"Uncle? Uncle, are you alright? Uncle? Kili, come here, I need your help." There are hands holding onto Thorin, holding him up, holding him together, he sinks into them.

"I set out to reclaim our homeland; I never meant to steal him from his." And the world shatters down around him and he sinks into darkness, faintly he can hear the sound of someone crying, but that doesn't matter anymore, nothing matters in the darkness. Nothing at all. Not a crown made of berries and leaves, so beautiful in its make, so unique in its beauty, so heart-breaking in its destruction. Not strands of golden hair imbued with the light of the sun, so beautiful in their perfection, so fragile in their beauty, so heart-breaking in their dulling and sullying. Not Thranduil Oropherion, king of the Mirkwood Realm and father of Legolas. Not even Thorin Oakenshield, King Under the Mountain matters in the darkness, and maybe that's why Thorin's mind decides to linger there for a while, because he never asked for this and he never wants to go back.


End file.
